DEF CON has been a part of the hacker community for over two decades. Pick up a bit of history and origin on the About Page. The DEF CON FAQ has the answers to most of the common questions you might have.

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Today we’re launching a brand new policy page at defcon.org, and we’d love for you to take a look at it, and only partly because of the emotional validation it will provide for our lawyers. There’s also a lot of useful information on the page for everyone who plans to visit our conference or our website. As of today, there are three documents up there:

Privacy Policy
We make a real effort to protect whatever pieces of your identity pass into our hands, and we want you to have an understanding of what we can and can’t do to keep that data secure.

Transparency Report
It’s reasonable to wonder if sites you visit frequently have been served with a court order demanding logs and information. The transparency report is how you’ll know if it happens to DEF CON.

Black Badge Policy
Wonder if that Black Badge on eBay will render you ‘uber’ at the next DEF CON? There are rules, and we wrote them down for you.

As other policies are finalized, we’ll update the policy page. If you need another reason to check it out, consider this: every time someone reads a privacy policy all the way through, a lawyer gets their wings. Or a lawyer does 1d4 of smoke damage. It’s one of those.

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DEF CON doesn’t just happen once a year in Las Vegas. It’s happening all around you, all the time. There are hundreds of DEF CON Groups all over the world that have regular meetings, put on talks and collaborate on projects of all kinds. You can be part of the one in your area, and if there isn’t one you can start one - it’s free and the information is available at https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-groups/dc-groups.html.

This week we’re sharing a talk on 3D printing given at DC719, the DEF CON Group for the Colorado Springs area. Dana G. Neilson presents on the history and uses of 3D printing and shows how they made a pretty cool DEF CON ring as a handy example. More importantly he shows that what ever sector you work in or what ever you want to make, if you can visualize it, draw it and either CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) it or have someone else CAD it, then your ideas can become physical object. There are endless possibilities with this growing technology, become part of its growth and then share what you know.

If you’re in the Colorado Springs area and want to learn more about DC719, they’re online at dc719.net. Introduce yourself.

If you’re part of a DC Group that has something they want shared by DEF CON, drop us a line at sleestak [at] def con dot org.

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Sharing is our jam. We make an effort to get our product to everyone who can learn from it via all kinds of channels: YouTube, BitTorrent, direct download and even eMule. But security is also our jam. (We have multiple jams - deal with it.) So we’re putting a lot of thought into ways to make all that sharing more secure.

CALL FOR PAPERS

It’s getting real, people. The DEF CON 23 Call for Papers is now officially open! If you’ve got some good stuff to share, it’s time to start getting your pitch together. You’ve got until May 10th to submit, but don’t get too comfortable. May will be upon us faster than you probably think.

To learn the requirements for a DEF CON talk, take a look at the CFP form and get an idea of the suggested topics, we’ve put together a handy guide at https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-23/dc-23-cfp.html. Get yourself up to speed, get your forms filled out and get your proposal in front of our selection committee. This is going to be our biggest DEF CON yet, and there’s a lot of opportunities for speakers, both experienced and brand new. We’re hoping one of them is you.

As if that wasn’t enough CFP excitement, we’re also happy to announce that the Social Engineering Village CFP opens today! The requirements and submission form are online at http://www.social-engineer.org/sevillage-call-papers/. The SE Village is very popular and it’s going to be even bigger and more ambitious this year.

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The long-silent creature begins to stir! We have a new post in the Speaker’s Corner of the DEF CON website. It’s from DEF CON alum Paul Renda and it concerns future presentation ideas that involve Robots, AI and Tesla coils. Straight out of the DEF CON dream journal. You can read it here: https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-speakerscorner.html#renda-emp

If you’re a past DEF CON speaker who has something to share with the DEF CON community, please get in touch (@_defcon_ , Facebook.com/defcon). We’re interested in what you’re thinking about and we’d love to help get the word out.

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More upgrade news! We're rolling out a major upgrade to the forums next week. New coat of paint, improved functionality, general up-leveling across the board. But wait - there's more! As soon as we've sorted out the new setup, we'll be releasing a mobile app version for Android and iOS. Stay tuned!

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Delivered on Thursday to help you get a jump start on your knowledge-binge weekend, we’ve got over 100 presentations ready to jump across your face-brain barrier. Don’t know where to start? We’ve included a handy playlist option so you can hit play once and not come up for air for a few days. For those who wish to watch in furtive silence so as not to arouse the pointy-headed boss, there are captions.

You might want to consider taking a personal day.

Please enjoy and spread the word. Share the videos with people you think can learn from them. Pass it on.

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Thanks for bearing with us during the last week or so, as defcon.org was migrated to a new location! We are currently getting the forums and Media servers buttoned up, and moving on toward DEF CON 23. Look for the Call for Papers to open in the next week or two!

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We’re moving to a new office in a few days, so please excuse any availability issues for the near future. We’re going to do our best to keep the site and the forums running smoothly through the whole transfer, but if you notice hiccups please know that we’ll be back to normal very soon.

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DEF CON had a pretty great year, thanks to all of you. It takes a huge effort from so many people to create the kind of magical hacker summer camp that DEF CON has become, and we want to thank all of you for the parts you play:

• The geniuses who create the talks and the geniuses who review and select them.

• The mad zealots who dream up and carry out the contests and events.

• The dedicated army of goons who descend upon a nondescript Vegas hotel every summer and turn it into a hacker utopia by sheer brute force and guile.

DC22 had our biggest attendance ever. So big that some of the villages are probably bigger than the first several DEF CONs. So big, in fact, that DEF CON 23 will be in two hotels. Imagine that!

We will be occupying both Bally’s and Paris for DEF CON 23. More space, bigger villages, shorter lines. Like always, we’re counting on DC’s volunteers and the community at large to fill all that new space with ideas and ingenuity. It’s the greatest thing about running this type of conference - no matter what new ideas we throw out there, the community never fails to push it further than we imagined.

Thanks to everyone who made 2014 so great, and let’s get amped for an epic 2015.

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As part of our social media housekeeping for the new year, we're leaving LinkedIn. As much as we like the service, we couldn't help but feel that we weren't using it to its potential, and that we were doing more to harvest spam than to communicate with all of you.

If you're one of the people who connected with DEF CON on LinkedIn, you should know that we won't do anything hasty. We'll leave everything where it is through January 2015, to give everyone time to collect whatever they need from our LinkedIn presence.

More importantly, we hope that you'll check out our other social media options. We have an active presence on G+, Facebook and Twitter and we're going to spend more time hanging out in r/defcon in the days ahead as well.

We have big plans for DEF CON 23, and we want your input.

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The season of DEF CON 22 Torrents continues! This time it’s a torrent of some of the great live music from this year’s con. Not available in any stores, this compilation includes live performances from:

That’s hours and hours of pure hotness, and it can all be yours for the low, low price of FREE. Act now, seeders are standing by. Offer good while supplies last. Side effects may include loose booty, headphoneitis and increased bounce rate. Ask your doctor if the DEF CON 22 Live Music torrent is for you.

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Legitimate Business Syndicate, the shadowy organization that provides the hustle and the muscle behind the DEF CON CTF tournament, has announced its list of qualifying contests for the 2015 showdown in Las Vegas.

If you have the team, the drive and the raw skills, it's time to start making plans. To pluck the flower of eternal glory from the Nevada desert, you must first prove yourself in the crucible of a qualifier.

Assemble. Register. Qualify. Prevail. The road to victory is now open.

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We've got two more versions of the DC22 talks available for your torrenting pleasure. We've got slide only video, with the audio and slides uninterrupted by speaker face. We've also got talking head video, which is audio and speaker face uninterrupted by slides.

If either one of those is your preferred flavor, then your moment has arrived. As always, we ask only that you enjoy them and seed them so others can enjoy them as well.

It's us against the derp, people. Let's spread the knowledge.

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Torrent update: 12 of the talks were missing from the first DEF CON 22 video/slides torrent, due to some unicode mishaps in their file names. We've corrected the links - this updated torrent file will complete your collection. As always, enjoy and pass it on.

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Waiting for the DEF CON 22 audio-only torrent? Wait no more! Every talk in one juicy torrent. Slurp them, seed them and load them into the noise-producing device of your choice. Feel the commute flying by - embiggening your brain painlessly as you go!

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Time to fire up your netslurpers - the DEF CON 22 video and slides are available for your datasuction. All the speakers, all the slides, in convenient Torrent form. Please enjoy them, share them, and seed if you are able. There's a lot of good stuff in there - you might want to block off a couple of days if you're a binge watcher.

Prefer a lighter download? Audio-only torrent should be live tomorrow. By the end of the week we'll have the slide-only and talking-head only versions too, if that's your thing.

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The theme will be ‘The 23 Enigma - a Hacker Noir’. Fedoras and rain-slicked streets. Smoky back rooms and numbers that show up too often for coincidence. While the good people of Everytown dream away the dark hours, the data wars rage without ceasing. Sleepless vigilantes fight for the users, though the users may never know. No matter. A bottle of the good stuff, a fast connection and the room to do a righteous night’s work, that’s enough. It’s gotta be. It’s all that’s left.

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We present to you, today’s featured DEF CON Speaker! The greatest ever! Ermahgerd look at it amplifry!
What a work horse! Never tires! All it’s bass…

Don’t like this? Do something about it.

If you’re a DEF CON Speaker (past or present) and would like to write a post to become featured here, on the Speakers Corner section of defcon.org, please send an email to Talks (at ) defcon (dot) org with your story. Drop us a line, let us know what you’re working on or what you’d like to share. DEF CON Groups members and speakers that also includes you! What’s your group been up to these days? Topics can vary from discussions on latest buzzword, walkthroughs, attack & defense, bio hacking, tips for improving certain skills, opinions on the state of affairs, etc. The possibilities are endless, and we are looking for content that fits in the spirit of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers'_Corner